


The Thanks I Get

by brodylover



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Destiel - Freeform, Holidays, Thanksgiving, slight destiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 08:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brodylover/pseuds/brodylover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wrote this for Thanksgiving. It's everybody celebrating and Cas is almost forgotten, but Dean cant forget his best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thanks I Get

It didn't smell like Bobby's house. It didn't look like Bobby's house either. The old wallpaper was still there, as was the furniture, but all of the books and papers and glasses had been picked up and put away. It actually looked like someone had vacuumed. The house was so full you could hardly tell.   
Everyone was there and they were all laughing and talking. It was as if they had forgotten that they were hunters, forgotten that the apocalypse was coming, and it was Thanksgiving. Jo and Rufus were telling stories by the door, but Jo shut up just long enough to give both Winchesters a hug and Rufus shook their hands and smiled. Ellen dragged Dean into the kitchen to try the gravy and he was then kicked out for trying everything else. Jodi looked lost as she cooked, this whole thing being her idea, but not knowing what anyone was talking about.   
It was so full that it was almost impossible to tell who it was that was missing.  
When they all sat down at the table, still talking and Ellen still smacking Dean's hands so that he wouldn't pile all of his food onto his plate at once, Bobby hit his glass with his fork. Everyone grew quiet as they looked over at him sitting in his wheelchair, clearing his throat.   
"Now, I know y'all are here to eat this wonderful food and thank you Jodi for the idea. Seriously, none of you would be here if it weren't for her, but she talked me into it. A lot of bad things are going on in the world right now, a lot, and I don't want to hear nothing about it. Not today. So you idjits better go around the table and say what you're thankful for and then we can eat."  
No one argued with him but they did all clap. Rufus started and he thanked the man who had invented scotch and rifles and his father. Jo also thanked her dad but also the Winchesters and her mother and Ash, even though he was no longer with them. It kept going but after three or four Dean realized who it was that was missing.  
"Where's Cas?" he turned to Bobby, trying to be quiet enough for everyone to keep going. They shut up anyway, looking over at the new conversation.  
"I thought he wouldn't be interested." Bobby shrugged, "He doesn't seem interested in most things. Does he even know how to celebrate?"  
"He's our friend. He's your friend. You think it matters if he knows how to celebrate?"  
"Well, you want him here why don't you invite him?"  
Dean apologized as he stood up, leaving the table and pulling his phone out of his pocket. He could hear everyone else going back to their thanks. The phone rang a few times before going to voice mail. That wasn't good. Dean had never gotten his voice mail before. Maybe he was busy, maybe he did know what Thanksgiving was and he was celebrating it in Heaven.   
"Hey Cas, it's Dean. We're at Bobby's. Get your feathery ass over here as quickly as you can."  
He returned to the table. It was almost their turn. Sam looked at him and there was worry in his eyes.  
"Where is he?" he whispered.  
"I got his voice mail." Dean's voice was quiet but not from whispering. He was always quiet when he was worried.  
Then the room grew quiet and a little bit cold as a breeze came through. Everyone stopped and were staring over, seeing Cas in the doorway. Jodi's mouth dropped when she saw him, eyes wide.   
"What? How?" her words weren't working. Bobby stroked her arm and tried to calm her down so he could explain.   
You would have thought Mary Winchester had walked in herself, Dean's face lit up so much.  
Dean was out of his chair and grabbing Cas but the shoulder, pushing him to the table. He was laughing and smiling, not noticing how Cas was even stranger than usual, even less emotional. "You made it!" he chuckled, "Here, you can have my seat. You take off your coat and relax."  
When Cas didn't move to remove the overcoat Dean grabbed a hold of it and helped to shake it off of him. Cas looked small and human without the beige shell, his black suit almost hanging off of him. When Dean finally left the room, putting the coat in the closet and digging around for another chair, Cas finally looked at everyone, eyes wide.   
"Is this really necessary? You seem to have enough people to take care of most tasks." He asked.  
"We don't need you for a hunt, Cas." Sam clasped his hand on the angel's shoulder, "It's Thanksgiving. We just want you to be with us. To celebrate."  
"Surely there are more important matters at hand."  
"Not right now." Bobby scoffed, "Dean wanted you to be here, it's a family and friend thing. We're going around saying what we're thankful for."  
"Is that what this holiday is for?"  
"Yes!" Dean proclaimed, setting his folding chair next to Cas's. The angel looked more than slightly uncomfortable as the only supernatural creature in a room so full of hunters, "It's a day of giving thanks and eating so much food that you explode."  
Cas' tilted his head to the side.   
"Not literally explode." Jo laughed. They had only met once before, briefly, but she could tell the cues when he had no idea what was being said to him, "Just eat until you're so full you don't want to move."  
"I have no need to eat." Cas almost looked guilty at that.  
"Just take a taste of everything, okay?" Sam leaned over, hitting his small shoulders with his huge ones, "Don't worry about fitting in or doing something productive. We're just relaxing, taking a break. You can just be yourself."  
Cas nodded to that and went quiet.   
On the other side of the table, Jo had turned to her mother and was whispering in her ear. There was a small amount of blood on Cas's shirt, which he was trying to hide with his suit jacket and the table but she had noticed it. Cas was hurt but it was clear that he didn't want anyone to worry so Ellen hushed her and they went back to giving their thanks.  
Soon enough it was Sam's turn to say what he was thankful for, "Uh, I guess I'm thankful for Dean, he's always been there for me, looking out for me, even when I didn't want him to. He kept me me. I'm thankful for Bobby, he's been the best dad I've ever known and he's always been there for both of us to talk to. I'm thankful for all of you for making my life more colorful. I'm thankful to Cas here for giving me back my brother and for saving us both so many times."  
Cas blushed at that slightly and then stared around, not sure as to what to say. He had heard everyone else give thanks but he still didn't know how to do it. To be thankful you had to feel.   
After a few moments of trying there was a hand on his shoulder and Dean was leaning in on him. "Do you need some more time?"  
Cas nodded.  
"Okay, I'll go first then." Dean straightened himself out a bit, "To tell the truth there's a lot for me not to be thankful for. There's a lot of bad stuff in this world and a lot of what I had been thankful for has been taken away from me. Still, I would like to thank my dad, John Winchester, for getting me ready for all of the crap in this world. I would like to give thanks to Sammy, who never gave up on me and cared about me even when I didn't care about myself. I would like to thank Bobby for being a grouchy old man and never letting me say I was okay when I wasn't. I'd like to thank my family. Family don't end in blood, that's what Bobby says and I see you all as my family. I may not have had much growing up, family wise, but now I have the biggest family in the world. I feel I could depend on each and every one of you and I don't want any of you feeling any different. Most of all though," Dean's voice cracked here and he clasped a hand onto the angel's shoulder. He didn't seem to notice how Cas jumped at the touch, "I'd like to thank Castiel. Cas here is an angel of the lord, the angel of Thursday, an extremely powerful being, and I think we all forget that sometimes. I treat him like he's a little kid, like he doesn't understand things, when I think maybe he understands everything more than is possible. He could do anything but he gave it all up. He left his home and his family for me, saved me from Hell, had faith in me when I didn't, made me better, gave me more than I ever deserved. I thank him for every day I've had and everything I've been able to do. I just hope that someday I would be able to repay him in some small aspect."  
Cas was staring at him. When Dean sat back down, the only one who had stood while saying what he was thankful for, he smiled back, his crow's feet crinkling. His hand went under the table to find Cas' and give it a light squeeze.  
"I cannot attempt to follow that." Cas shook his head.  
"Try."  
"I am thankful for this life you all have, all of the lives of human beings. I was here before your species was even born and I have watched as you have grown. I am thankful that you have the ability to do what you do, to have mortal lives. To be able to feel and love and grow. I am thankful to the greats, to Christ and Gandhi and Dickens and Cleopatra, for inspiring and teaching you all, for making the human race a beautiful thing. I am thankful to my brother, even though he is the adversary, for being the first to fall and for showing all of my kind that while there are consequences, we can live without my father's orders. I am thankful to my father, who you call God, for creating the human race and the angelic race and everything else. For giving us lives and ideals and will. I am thankful to him for the last order I still care about, the only one that has remained as my priority after rebeling; 'Save Dean Winchester'. It is something I still do, in helping him, in saving what he cares about, in doing what little I can. And I am thankful to the Winchesters. If it were not for them I may have died at my brother's hand, I may not have learned about the joys of free will, I may have never fallen. I am glad to think of them as my friends, even though I have lost much I have gained much more."  
When he looked over at Dean, the pain in his side close to being too much to bear, he saw tears in the humans eyes and a smile on his mouth. He could never understood how humans could be happy and sad at the same time.   
"Did I say something wrong?" he asked.  
"Yeah, Cas, just something small." Dean wrapped his arm around the angel's shoulders and pulled him close, his jacket opening up enough for the bloody stain on his shirt to come out in the open, "You called us the Winchesters. At this point I'd say it's safe for you to just call us family."  
Cas smiled at that as best he could, but the smile left Dean as he looked down at the bloody mess in his side.  
"What happened?" he couldn't disguise his worry.  
"I was wounded when you called, that's why I did not answer. I did not want you to worry as this is a day of celebration. It will be gone soon enough."  
That sentence stayed with Dean throughout the night, throughout the feasting and the football game afterwards. 'It will be gone soon enough.' How often did Cas think like that? He was an immortal, a human life is gone soon enough to him, gone and forgotten. Of all the things that could happen, Dean did not want to be forgotten, especially not by Cas. He kept a hand on him all through the day and when Cas was finally healed up he must have realized what was plaguing Dean as he leaned over and whispered in his ear, "I am thankful to Dean Winchester, my brother and friend, who has taught me what humans are and how to feel. I will never forget him."


End file.
